About Me

Originally a geologist by training, I now work as a museum professional. My passion is old photographs, the photographers who took them, the equipment and technologies they used, the people and scenes in the photos, and the stories behind them.

Friday, 30 October 2009

Nola Sinclair recently sent me scans of a couple of engaging cartes de visite by H.H. Vorley of Westport, Charleston and Reefton, on the West Coast of New Zealand, who I have featured in a previous Photo-Sleuth article. She explained that "the subjects in the photo are likely to be a family of my husband's Shetland Island forebears who came to Charleston in 1876 to mine the sands at Nine Mile Beach for gold. We have been trying to get a fairly exact date so we can work out who the children are likely to be, in order to make sure that it is indeed the family we think it is."

This challenge required some considerable background reading on my part, but the subject is of particular interest to me. Not only was I involved in the gold exploration industry for some fifteen years, but I've long had a fascination with historic gold rushes and the motley cast of characters who often played a part in them, such as the Californian forty-niners (1849), the Witwatersrand uitlanders (1886) and the Klondike stampeders (1897).

Prior to the 1860s the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island was an almost completely uninhabited no-man's land, the steep forest-encrusted and almost inpenetrable slopes and rocky, surf-pounded coasts with few natural harbours discouraging all but a few passing explorers. Maori visitors, who succeeded in extracting prized pounamu from the river valleys and mountain peaks, and pakeha whalers briefly occupied a few temporary shore stations, but neither group left much in the way of permanent settlements. District boundaries tended to be merely lines drawn on the maps by the colonial state authorities with little real meaning on the ground. In 1861 Charles Hursthouse described it as "a savage, gloomy country, silent, desolate and dreary ... this vast tract is unpeopled; millions of acres have never been trodden by human foot ... fresh from nature's rudest mint, untouched by hand of man.," but then went on to predict with pinpoint accuracy the forthcoming means of change: "... this part ... has as yet been very partially explored ... [but] may prove to be New Zealand's 'Gold Coast'." [1]

Between 1865 and 1867 a sequence of events shattered this isolation forever. In the early 1860s the province of Otago, situated on the other side of the Southern Alps, had experienced a gold rush the likes of which had never before been seen in New Zealand. As individual diggings like Gabriel's Gully suffered declining yields of the royal metal, prospectors looked further afield towards the West Coast, walking overland through the dripping, verdant forests and exploring by boat the shingle beaches and rivers along the wild, rocky coast. [2]

On the 27th February 1865 the landing in Nelson of an single enormous shipment of gold from diggings at Hokitika, equal to the entire production from the previous year, precipitated a tremendous rush. Within a matter of weeks word had spread, not only to Wellington, across the Cook Strait, and more distant provinces such as Canterbury and Otago, but also across the Tasman to Victoria and New South Wales. Diggers braved the wild seas, cramming every available sea-going vessel, and travelled to the new finds by any means they could find. Settlements began to spring up in the Waimea Valley, Okarito, Greymouth and the Pakihi, between the Buller and Grey Rivers. [3]

Almost overnight clusters of scruffy tents mushroomed into bustling towns with narrow streets, elaborate wooden buildings, hotels and dancing girls. [4] Perhaps the greatest of these in the history of the West Coast was the Charleston rush, reaching a peak between 1867 and 1870 with a population of around 5,000. [5] Boats bringing in both prospectors and supplies braved the narrow and treacherous entrance to the tiny Constant Bay, with wrecks and tragedy a common occurrence. [6]

One of the many hundreds of people who set up shop in Charleston to take advantage of the tremendous increase in trade was photographer Herbert H. Vorley. [7] Although born to a wealthy merchant family in London he emigrated to New Zealand in the mid-1860s, arriving on the West Coast and setting up as a photographer and phrenologist in the town of Westport prior to 1867. While maintaining this studio, he is also known to have operated branch studios in Charleston (1867, 1869, 1873 & 1875), Hokitika (1870), Buller (1874 & 1877) and Reefton (1877-78). [8]

It seems likely from the nature of advertisements in the Grey River Argus, the West Coast Times and the Inangahua Times between 1875 and 1878 that the branch studios were open only intermittently, and on occasion staffed by managers or employees. A detailed examination of back issues of the Charleston Herald - sadly not yet included in Papers Past, the National Library of New Zealand's otherwise comprehensive digital coverage of old newspapers - may be they key to determining more precisely the dates of Vorley's presence in Charleston. [9] An inheritance received after the death of an English aunt in January 1879 enabled Vorley and his family to leave Westport in May that year and return to England, where he died a year later. [10]

The gold output of the Charleston area, in tune with the "boom and bust" cycles experienced in all of the other gold fields, was already waning by the early 1870s and the population dwindled rapidly, with many leaving to try their luck in newer fields such as Thames on the North Island. [3] Other enterprising diggers remained in the area and a large and well documented group of Scots from the Shetland Islands turned their hand to washing gold at Nine-Mile Beach, a short distance north of Charleston. Although the alluvial beach deposits had been discovered and worked by other beachcombers using fairly primitive methods a few years earlier, the first of the Shetlanders to arrive, in January 1870, were Magnus Mouat and Gilbert Harper from the village of Norwick on the northernmost island of Unst. [11]

Having spent a couple of years wandering the Queensland, New South Wales and Bathurst gold fields and eight months at Bradshaw's Creek near the Buller River with little to show for their efforts, the auriferous black sands at the southern end of Nine-Mile Beach appeared to offer more promise. [11] So much, it appears, that sent word to other members of the original Unst party who had wandered elsewhere in Melbourne and Otago, and wrote to friends and family back home in Unst.

A dwindling of traditional fishing and farming opportunities, as well as clearances in the Shetlands, coincided with timely offers of assisted passage from Sir Julius Vogel's recruitment drives and immigration schemes. [12] Over the next few years a large number of families joined them, such that by 1877 it was estimated that there were about a hundred Unstmen working the sands at Nine-Mile. In November 1875, the provincial government surveyor was kept very busy surveying new leases and extended claims on Nine Mile Beach. [13] Magnus Mouat himself went home for a couple of years, during which time he married, returning to the West Coast goldfields with wife and baby aboard the Howrah in November 1876. [14]

The Shetlanders were strong, practical men and soon improved their chances by purchasing most of the claims on Nine-Mile Beach and by developing new methods of extracting fine gold from the layers of black beach sands. Apart from the building of extensive tail races or flumes by Messrs. Hall, Parsons and Harle to bring to the beach the water so essential to the operation, already well under way by March 1872 [15][16], the Shetlanders made significant improvements to the washing process, designing the multi-tier mobile washing tables, or "beach boxes." These devices are illustrated in the images above and below, while the tail races are clearly visible in the background of the lower image.

The Charleston Herald (reported in the Grey River Argus) remarked on their good fortune although it was, no doubt, mixed in with decent proportion of hard slog:

1 December 1876The beach claims in Second Bay and on the Nile and Nine-mile Beach, have for the past five or six months been paying exceedingly well. The men on Nine-mile Beach have been very fortunate, they having during the above-mentioned term been earning on an average from 25s. to 30s. per day.

6 July 1878since the late stormy weather, accompanied by heavy south-west gales, the Nine-Mile Beach claims are paying splendidly, some of the miners who work long hours netting as much as £12 per man per week. It is said, and with a good deal of truth, that the mining property, dams included, sold some six years ago by Mr Fred Hall for the sum of four or five hundred pounds, to-day is worth as many thousands. This tells well in favour of the healthy condition of mining matters in this district.

13 August 1878One of the beach claims which was only the other day taken upon the Nine-mile Beach, on the Northern limit, having hitherto being lying idle, was sold last week by Mr Thomas Humphries to Mr Sullivan for the sum of £50. At present there are more beachcombers at work on the Nine-mile Beach than has been remembered for the last six or seven years, and the lowest wages made by them is £3 and £4 per week, the highest being £10 and £12. The beach has "made" so much that the men are sure that payable ground exists to within close limits to the Totara river - a distance from the north claim, now work of about two miles. At present the water is not conveyed any distance along the beach, so that there is little probability of the ground now lying dormant being worked just yet, though we hear that it would be a very easy matter to bring water to the ground.

Nola Sinclair's husband's ancestor James Mouat Harper (1832-1918) arrived with his wife Margaret (née Anderson) (1836-1918) and eight children [17] in Nelson in January 1876, after a three month trip from Unst. They were part of a large group aboard the Caroline making their way to Charleston where a great Unst reunion was subsequently held. [11] The carte de visite portrait shown above depicts a large group of nine men, women and children standing in front of a wooden building, with a backdrop of moderate sized trees. The house has a cylindrical water tank, apparently for collecting water off the roof via the visible gutters and down-pipes, and a timber(and corrugated iron?)-encased chimney to the left. There is also a wood picket fence in the right foreground, possibly enclosing a vegetable garden.

Nola also sent me this image of another carte de visite, which she had received from Joan Robertson, a distant cousin of her husband's still living in the Shetlands. It is very similar, although not identical, to the one that Nola has in her collection.

A comparison of detailed scans elucidates some differences: most of the figures have moved slightly, and in the second shot there is an additional male adult figure standing immediately to the right of the doorway. The only adult female is standing at the extreme left of the group. The youngest of the children, standing at second from left, is perhaps three or four years old; the clothes suggest a little girl - although one cannot be certain at this young age - who is holding his or her mother's hand. The figure to the right of this is almost certainly a boy, wearing a cap and long trousers, and probably five or six years old. Next are two girls, aged about 8-9 and 10-11, respectively. To the right of the doorway a further group of three girls are fairly similar to each in height - almost the height of the adult woman at extreme left - so it is difficult to estimate their ages beyond saying that they are probably in their mid- to late teens. They all have their hair in a style typical of the 1870s, partly in plaits tied up in a circlet on the crown, and partly descending in ringlets to the shoulders at the back.

All three men are bearded and wearing hats. I would suggest that the man to the left of the doorway, wearing a waistcoat, is older while the two to the right are somewhat younger, but it is difficult to be precise. The men to the left and right are wearing bowler hats, of a style with a moderately high brow which was common through the 1870s and early 1880s. The man in the middle has what appears to be a forerunner of the wider flat-brimmed slouch hat, and is wearing a jacket.

The reverse of the second carte de visite (shown below) is inscribed, in what appears to be a contemporary hand, "to Anthony." Nola tells me that the second photograph was a copy mailed back home to Anthony Anderson, great grandfather of Joan Robertson, possibly by Anthony's sister Margaret Yule Harper.

If this is the case, then she may have been the woman standing at the extreme left of the group, and the remaining figures would then include her husband James Harper and at least some of their children. She is dressed in clothes typical of of the mid- to late 1870s. The bodice is tight-fitting with a prominent vertical row of buttons, and a bow at her neck, while the sleeves are narrow, a little looser at the wrist, and possibly with a frilled or pleated cuff. Although not actually visible, the bustle in her skirt is probably small, if present at all, and the skirt contains several layers, types of fabric or ornamentation. Her hair is parted in the centre drawn back tightly, probably into a bun at the back of her head.

Two further children were born to James and Margaret after their arrival in New Zealand, bringing the total to ten [17]:

The reverse of both card mounts have a design very similar to that of the Vorley carte de visite shown earlier, with the addition of studio locations in Charleston and Reefton, suggesting to me a slightly later date i.e. some time after c. 1870-72. We can be fairly sure, however, that the photographs were taken prior to May 1879, when Vorley left New Zealand for good. This rules out the possibility of the youngest child born to James and Margaret in New Zealand being in the photograph, since Anthony was born in December 1881. If height is used as an approximate indication of age, then the children in the photograph are arranged from left to right in increasing order of age.

Now some theorising. If - and I agree with Nola that we should emphasize the 'if' - this were to be the Harper family, then the only young male child, aged approximately five in the photograph, must be Gilbert Harper, born in Unst on 3 March 1873, suggesting a possible date for the group portrait of 1878 or early 1879. How do the the ages of the remaining children and adults in the group fit with what we know about the Harper family? Well, I think they match very nicely. N.B. The numbers in the provisional list below refer to those shown in the silhouette index above.

1. Margaret Yule Harper née Anderson, aged 42ish - Margaret does not appear very pregnant in this photograph, and since she had her ninth child Isabella in January 1879, I suggest this is unlikely to have been taken in late 1878. It is conceivable, however, that it was taken after the birth of Isabella, and that the baby is asleep indoors.
2. Ann Harper, aged 3
3. Gilbert Harper, aged 5 - Gilbert died at Charleston on 14 March 1883, aged 10.
4. Jemima Harper, aged 8
5. Margaret Harper, aged 11 - although the top of Margaret's head is only slightly higher than that of Jemima, examination of her feet shows that she is standing in a slight dip, and is therefore somewhat taller than she appears in relation to her next youngest sister.
6. James Mouat Harper, aged 45 - James Harper's central position in the group and manner of standing with his feet slightly apart, hands crossed calmly and patiently in front of him, is commensurate with his status as head of the household.
7. This is probably a younger man, although the full beard does disguise the age to some extent. His is a youthful figure assuming a very relaxed pose, his legs crossed, leaning against the door jamb with his thumbs tucked into his belt, holding the flaps of his jacket open. The jacket may have fringe sleeves, in a "Western style." This is most likely to be William Harper, who would have been aged 19, and very much "at home."
8. Williamina Harper, aged 13 or 14
9 & 10. Elizabeth Harper, aged 16, and Charlotte Harper, aged 21
11. This man, perhaps a little older than the man postulated as William Harper, is standing well off to the right hand side of the others. With his elbow perched on the window sill and right hand to his cheek, he is facing and leans in towards the rest of the group, in contrast to all of the others, who look directly at the photographer and his camera. So, while he is clearly part of the group, one gets the feeling that he is somehow distanced from it, in both a physical and more social sense. The eldest Harper daughter Charlotte married James Harper Mouat (1849-1928) at Charleston on 3 May 1878, and my feeling is that this is young Mr Mouat. He would have been about 30 years old at the time, and the photograph may have been taken before the wedding - hence the distance between him and the Harpers. [17]

The house forming the backdrop in this group portrait looks very similar in shape and form to the second building along the beach in the 1886 view, as pictured in the detailed image above, although Nola has pointed out that the frieze of large trees behind the house has been removed.

So ... we can make several tentative conclusions:

(a) The carte de visite portrait was most likely taken between 1874 and 1879 at or near Westport, Charleston or Reefton on the West Coast of New Zealand.

(b) We have a possible identification of the house in the portrait as being one of those built by the Shetland community prior to 1886 on Nine-Mile Beach.

(c) The group shown matches very closely the Harper family that we expect to have been living at Nine-Mile Beach in 1878.

Although I feel we have a probable identification, to be more confident I would suggest examining the make up of the other Shetland families who were living at Nine-Mile Beach in the late 1870s, to see if any of them fit the pattern. Most of the families living there were fairly closely related, having emigrated from the same small district on the island of Unst, so it is conceivable that somebody else might have sent a copy home "to Anthony."

In the mid-1880s there were still between 70 and 80 Shetlanders working the sands at Nine-Mile Beach but eventually the deposits were depleted and by the turn of the century, when the above photograph was taken, the numbers had declined considerably. [14] In 1906 there were only 15, and the last of the original pioneer Shetlanders, William Harper, moved away in 1916. [11]

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Nola Sinclair and her husband for the opportunity to use her photograph as the subject of this article, and the Alexander Turnbull Library for permission to use scanned images of photographs in their collections.

[9] Extracts from Grey River Argus, West Coast Times, Nelson Evening Mail, Inangahua Times & Evening Post. Papers Past, Digital images of New Zealand newspapers and periodicals, from the National Library of New Zealand.

[10] Rackstraw, Tony (2008) Vorley, Herbert Henry. Early Canterbury Photographers, including South Canterbury and the West Coast, 22 August 2008.

Monday, 19 October 2009

Almost a year ago I posted this image of a rather bizarre transportation device in an article on Photo-Sleuth in the hope that readers would be able to help solve the mystery of what exactly it was, and why it appears in my aunt's collection of old family photographs. The footnoteMaven's 18th Smile for the Camera Carnival has the theme of "Travel" and seems an opportune moment to revisit the subject, summarizing what I've learnt.

The carte de visite is part of the Payne family heritage, held by my aunt, which I scanned on a visit to England a couple of years ago. There is no background to it at all, except that it probably came from the collection of my great-grandfather Charles Vincent Payne (1868-1941). The photograph shows some kind of viewing platform on which at least two dozen people are crowded, itself mounted on stilts or a tower standing in water. Ripples in the water around the base of the legs suggest some movement, either of the water, or of the contraption itself. It is apparently located in a bay, as a shoreline with buildings is vaguely visible in the background.

Have Space Suit, Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein,1958 hardcover edition illustration by Ed Emshwiller,published by Charles Scribner & Sons, New York

The contraption is a little too rectangular - and authentic - to be one of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds tripods, but it does seem almost in the genre of science fiction, or what passed as science fiction in the Victorian era. Hence my somewhat off-the-wall visualization of the theme of Robert Heinlein's 1958 book which lends its title to this article.

There are some further clues to the moving tower. Handwritten in purple ink on the front and reverse of the card mount is the following text:

Passes between St Malo & ...It goes byMachineryI passed over it last year& again this year twiceAug 1882It takes about 3 minutesto cross, its only 1 sous

By comparison with handwriting that I know to be that of Charles Vincent's father Henry Payne (1842-1907) - from an 1891 letter, reproduced in a previous Photo-Sleuth article - I believe this must be the hand of Henry. If he did indeed travel from his home town of Derby in the English Midlands to France a couple of times in the early 1880s, Henry must have been a pretty well travelled - and busy - man. In 1880 Henry, his wife Henrietta and children made a short-lived attempt to settle in America, spending a few months farming at Bladensburg, Maryland before returning to England late that year or in early 1881.

What was Henry doing abroad again so soon? Nigel Aspdin has suggested in a comment to the previous article that he may have used a separate and more circuitous route back from the United States, rather than the more direct Baltimore-Liverpool run which the rest of the family presumably took. He also postulates that wrapping up the farming business venture in North America may have required another trip, and it was easier, quicker or cheaper to "take a train Derby-Portsmouth, a ferry across to St Malo, and catch a ship in France, say Le Havre, St Nazaire, Cherbourg or maybe St Malo itself." All of these possibilities are worth thinking about and investigating in further detail some time, but I will resist getting too sidetracked for the duration of compiling this article.

Nigel also remarks on the sous (or should that be "sou") apparently still being used as the colloquial price for a fare, almost a century after the official currency had changed from livres/sous/deniers to francs/centimes. Another diversion which I shan't pursue for the moment, although still of interest.

Nigel again provided the vital clue to the real nature of what I had referred to as a possible tourist trap with the key search words, "St Malo transporter bridge," which brought up a modern image of a Meccano model made by a hobbyist to a design from the May-June edition of Meccano Magazine.

I also found an original image of the design in the facsimile online Meccano Magazine hosted by Rémi's Meccano Pages, which includes in its caption: ... an excellent representation of the Rolling Bridge which conveys passengers from St. Malo to St. Servan.

From this it was but a short step to several descriptions of the history and numerous images of what was more correctly termed the Pont Roulant of St. Malo. Two of the most informative are on the Tramway Information pages and in a Wikipedia article. The latter is in French, which I could conceivably have read (with some difficulty), but for which I more conveniently used Google's handy Translation Toolbar. The result is not too bad in terms of fluency, although as is common with most online translators, it produces an unintentionally amusing commentary on the workings of the unusual machinery:

The bridge was traveling on Vignoles rail 38 kg / m, whose spacing was 4.60 m. The truck was supported by wheels 1 m in diameter, which was placed before a stone-hunting.The platform 7 mx 6 m, surrounded by a railing crossbar with benches in length, included a pool party where the passengers took shelter in bad weather.The set of 14 tons was pulled by strings. A steam 10 c. was prepared in a wood shop located on the wharf. The driver of the platform indicated by the sudden departure of trumpet at machinist posted in this shop. The arrest was served by a second blow of the trumpet.

The Tramway Information article reveals that the Pont Roulant was constructed in 1873 by a local architect, Alexandre Leroyer, who held a concession to operate it for sixty years. It spanned the entrance to the French port of St Malo, which at low tide could be traversed along a stone causeway, and was designed to transport passengers between the towns of Saint-Malo and Saint-Servan. The original two-minute (or three, according to Henry) passage on the 13 metre-high rolling platform was made between two specially designed "docking stations," powered by a steam engine housed at the St.-Servan end, and carried up to two thousand people a day. Later, after the Leroyer's death the new concessionaire replaced the steam engine with electric motors. The centre of the platform had a covered cabin with glazed sides, affording panoramic views even under inclement weather conditions. Despite being seriously damaged by fire on one occasion in August 1909, and by collisions with ships in February 1889 and November 1922, it continued running until its eventual closure in November 1923.

Judging by the number of extant used and unused postcards from the first couple of decades of the twentieth century, such as the example above posted in 1910, the ride continued to be a popular novelty with tourists right through to Edwardian times. I have noticed, however, that the postcard views rarely show as many customers aboard as Henry's carte de visite.

The final words I will leave to Phil Beard, who in his commentary on the visual arts and popular culture refers to the Pont-Roulant as Leroyer's "magnificent indifference to appearing ridiculous" and a product "of the Nineteenth Century imagination, notable for [its] impudent attempt to conquer time and space with the most slender resources." Perhaps so, but it succeeded in catching the tourists' imagination, and their sous.

Sunday, 18 October 2009

I have wondered, when looking at old school photographs from the Victorian period, whether the children are wearing their ordinary everyday school clothes, or if an impending visit from the photographer was enough of an occasion for their parents to dress them in their Sunday best. I found mention of poor attendance on school photos day in 1881 recorded in a school log book from the Talgarth district of Powys, Wales (Victorian Powys), ascribing the childrens' absence to their not possessing decent clothes for the special day:

At 11 a Photographer came to take a view of the buildings. A very thin attendance, for some of the children did not come because of this. The Worths & Jones, Trebarried all stayed away at 11, so we stood in the playground that the view might have a lively appearance. The children who were away yesterday came today. I asked them why they were so silly yesterday & it appears it was their clothes that was the drawback.

This carte de visite portrait of a group of 26 boys aged from about 5 up to around 10 or 11 with their master is from my own collection. It was a recent eBay purchase and, as is the case with most such purchases, has sadly lost its provenance. The group is a motley one, and there is clearly no uniform in use, although the appearance of a couple of striped scarves hints at possible school colours. Due to the large range in ages, it seems likely that this was either a small school or even a Sunday School.

The photographer obviously had some difficulty keeping the children still. I estimate from the card mount design and clothing that it was taken in the mid-1870s, say between c.1873 and 1876, when exposure times were still fairly lengthy, measured in terms of seconds rather than fractions of a second. It would not have been an easy task for the master to keep his young subjects' attention on the camera and stop them from fidgeting. He has two boys, probably the most troublesome ones, right by his side where he can keep them out of trouble. Several boys have moved during the exposure. None look particularly pleased with the experience, save perhaps the lad seated at the far right, who seems particularly anxious to demonstrate a devoted attention to his studies.

The brick wall forming the backdrop to the school group portrait is probably a school building but it has not been identified. The window shows a good reflection of another brick wall opposite, and some distance behind the photographer, judging by the apparent brick size.

William Pearson (1827-1885) was one of Derby's earliest photographers, graduating to that occupation from being a chimney sweep. In fact, he is listed with both professions in several sources through to the early 1860s. He opened his first studio around 1858 and continued to operate in St Peter's, Derby until at least 1881. Although his output does not appear to have been as prolific as the studios of Derby's other early practitioners, such as that of James Brennen, the quality of his portraits was quite acceptable. Pearson is recorded as taking mug shots of prisoners at Derby Gaol in April 1863, and perhaps the venture into school portraiture was another attempt to expand his clientele and drum up new business.

The most interesting feature of this carte de visite only emerged after I had sent scanned images of the front and reverse to friend and photo-sleuthing collaborator Nigel Aspdin. The sharp-eyed Nigel noticed there appeared to be something hand written on the reverse of the card mount. Although it wasn't clear from the detailed scan, I took out the original photograph and, by holding it at an angle to the sunlight, I was able to make it out as:

E. BostockKensington StreetUttoxeter Road

The natural assumption is, of course, that E. Bostock was one of the subjects of this group portrait. However, I was already aware that one Erasmus F. Bostock operated as a photographer in Derby in the latter part of the 19th Century, so I checked my notes. Indeed, Erasmus was living with his parents at 12 Kensington Street, off Uttoxeter Road, in the parish of St Werburgh, Derby, at the time of both the 1871 and 1881 Census.

An 1881 trade directory entry and the census enumeration of that year are the first records I have found of Bostock working as a photographer, at which time he appears to have been in partnership with a Mr. Carr, with premises at 8 Macklin Street. I also know that Bostock specialised in school portraits, from the existence of several cabinet cards from the late 1880s and early 1890s marked, "E. Bostock, Photographer of Schools, &c. Derby." It now seems likely to me that Bostock initially trained as a photographer in the studio of William Pearson, familiarising himself with the trade before opening his own business. Photographers had to learn their trade somewhere, and where better than as an assistant, and employee, in an established operation.

Much less information survives about the early careers of photographers, when they were usually training as photographic assistants. While census records might give their professions, they hardly ever show who they worked for, and trade directory entries provide the names of the proprietors, very rarely those of their employees. Anecdotal evidence is sometimes available. For example, the career of well known Derby portraitist W.W. Winter started with him being an assistant in the studio of E.N. Charles. After Charles died in 1863 his widow ran the studio briefly with Winter's help; she married him in 1864, and he took over the studio thereafter. Sadly, little detailed knowledge of studio history such as that preserved for W.W. Winter Ltd. exists for other Derby studios, so information such as this snippet from Bostock's early career are important.

I've had some difficulty in determining when school photography became commonplace, and I would appreciate hearing from readers who have or know of such portraits from the 1860s or earlier. The rather nice portrait included above, from Stuart Axe's Flickr photostream, shows a uniformed group of boys at Chelmsford Charity School in 1862. All of those in my collection, however, are from the 1870s or later.

Apart from Bostock, there do not appear to have been any other Derby photographers who specialised in school photography. George W. Holden was a wide-ranging scholastic specialist from Windsor who is known to have plied his trade in Derby around 1877. Benjamin Brough from Chesterfield advertised his services as a "Lanternist and Photographer, Schools & Gentlemen's residences, &c." in the 1880s, but is unlikely to have ventured as far south as Derby. R.K. Peacock, Gibson & Sons and W.W. Winter - and possibly others - took school photos on occasion during the 1890s and later, but did not specifically advertise this service.

Friday, 2 October 2009

Motivated - perhaps inspired would be a better word - by Colleen Fitzpatrick's Forensic Genealogy mystery photo contest this week (Contest #226), I've been thinking art deco (or should that be Art Deco). I hope I'm not giving too much of the game away to say that I've always thought of New York's Chrysler Building as one of the more breathtakingly spectacular and visually effective examples, perhaps even the epitome, of this style of architecture. Although I've never visited New York, if I do one day, this will be one of the places that I'll be sure to visit, and not merely for the earthy marble walls and fittingly decorated lift doors on the ground floor.

The photographer of the well known Chrysler Building image was photo-journalist extraordinaire Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971), whose autobiography (Portrait of Myself, published in 1963) featured a photograph (above) on its front cover showing her with camera in action astride one of the huge metallic gargoyle-like protruberances from the Chrysler Building. This photo, in turn, neatly echoes that which forms the subject of Colleen's photo contest.

Quite by coincidence, this week I received an email from someone who had found my brief profile of photographer Sol. Young of New York, compiled some four years ago while researching a collection of photographs sent to me by Irene Savory. My correspondent wondered whether I might be able to tell her more about a mounted portrait photograph, illustrated above, of a young woman that she had discovered while cleaning out her attic. It's difficult for me to tell from her email whether the photograph has any family connection, so I can't really comment on the provenance. Merely from the hairstyle and clothing - and I'm not claiming any great expertise in dating fashions from this era - I estimate a rough date of perhaps the early 1920s. The young woman looks to me to be in her mid- to late twenties, which gives a birth date of around or just before the turn of the century.

Solomon Young was born in Kraków, Poland - then part of Galizien Kroenlande (Galicia Crownland), Austrian Bohemia - on 7 April 1865, son of Isaac L. Young and Lena Wachsmann. He emigrated to the United States in June 1882 (or 1883) at the age of 17, where he settled in New York and became a naturalised citizen some five years later on 1 August 1888. By this time several other members of his family, including his widowed mother and married sister, had also arrived in New York. He appears to have set up as a publisher and book seller from premises in Norfolk Street, in what is now the Lower East Side, until about 1891-1892.

Sol married Minnie Marx on Boxing Day 1892 in Manhattan, New York, and opened his first photographic premises near Union Square the following year. He continued to operate a studio at 17 Union Square West, with a home at 152 East 116th Street (East Harlem) until at least 1899. The trade directories list only his name, but since Sol and Minnie never had any children I presume that she too worked in the studio. One could easily imagine Minnie tending to customers at the front desk in the shop, while Sol. took portraits in the studio.

The decade from 1900 until 1910 is something of a mystery, as no records have been found, although it is clear that Sol must have thrived and operated a successful photographic business partnership with his wife during this period. The 1910 Census shows him and Minnie living with his mother at Number 210, 107th Street (Riverside Park).

However, a listing of branches on the reverse of a card mount from around 1910-1915 (shown above) suggests an even greater early expansion of the business, with at least twelve branches in existence across New York, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Jersey City and Newark by the time this portrait was taken. The device of a lion brandishing a sword was already well established as the studio's "mark" by this time.

At about this time he and Minnie also moved their home to 600 West 116th Street, between Columbia University and the Hudson River. Sol and Minnie had been industrious, and it was obviously paying off. Between July and September 1914 they were able to take a long holiday with a trip to Europe, travelling to Germany, Austria and Holland, and presumably leaving their studios in the capable hands of their managers and employees.

It seems likely that they had intended to visit family in Krakow but their timing was not the best. The outbreak of war throughout Europe in late July was perhaps unexpected, in spite of the build up in tensions between the Eurpean nations for some years. News of the Russian attacks on East Prussia in late August (Battle of Tannenberg), although well to the north of Sol's homeland in Bohemia, seems likely to have rapidly precipitated an early homeward departure.

The swift German invasion through Belgium and into north-western France in late August and early September, culminating in the First Battle of the Marne, may have disrupted the plans for their journey home considerably. In the event, they must have travelled with some trepidation across the German state which was now at war on several fronts, vying for space on trains full of Imperial troops mobilising for the front. They departed from the neutral Dutch port of Rotterdam on 12 September 1914 aboard the S.S. Nieuw Amsterdam, and arrived back home in New York nine days later, somewhat relieved, I feel sure.

Some time between 1910 and 1915, they had moved their primary premises from Union Square to 40 West 34th Street and it appears to have remained the main branch for many years. On Friday 23 September 1921, however, Solomon Young died, aged only 56.

New York Times, 24 Sep 1921Sol Young, founder of a chain of eighteen photographic studios, died yesterday at his home, 600 West 116th Street, at the age of 56. He was one of the pioneers in the pastel and crayon industry, opening his first studio in Union Square in 1893.

The brief newspaper obituary states that eighteen branches were operating at that time. Minnie Young was clearly quite capable because she continued to operate many of these branches for some years with a posse of managers and assistants. They must have earned her a decent income, as she employed a chauffeur in 1922 and made an extensive trip to mainland Europe in the summer of 1923, visiting Germany, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Switzerland and France. In March 1931 Minnie travelled abroad again, paying a brief visit to London, England.

The charming portrait of an - as yet - unidentified young girl (shown above) is, sadly, undated, although Michael-Ann Belin is currently investigating who it might be. I suspect that it was taken in the early to mid-1920s.

The portrait was sold in an elaborately decorated printed and embossed card folder, of a type which became very popular in the United States during the post-Great War years, particularly the 1920s and early 1930s. The front of the folder has a new emblem, somewhat more stylish than Sol's original lion & sword logo. The reverse of the folder has a large number of studio premises listed. They were situated throughout New York (Bronx, Brooklyn, Rochester), New Jersey (Jersey City, Newark, Trenton, Paterson, Union City), Connecticut (Bridgeport) and Pennsylvania (Philadelphia).

The business flourished throughout the 1920s and into the early 1930s. By 1933 Minnie Young appeared to be in the process of handing over the reins of the business to her husband's nephew, Arthur Lewis Pawliger (1891-1970), who is shown as president and treasurer of Sol. Young Photographer Inc. in a directory of that year. Two years later, at the age of 63, Minnie Young died.

During the years of the Depression, the firm came up with a marketing plan to keep the once successful business afloat. They reputedly sent photographers out on the streets of large cities with ponies, hoping to entice customers with children to have "studio quality" portraits taken with the animals.

I haven't yet been able to determine how long it remained in business, but it seems unlikely to have survived much beyond the onset of the Second World War. In their time, however, they operated from a huge number of different addresses. I have attempted to provide an interim list of these, together with some dates of known operation.

Finally, I would like to focus on the premises from which Sol. and Minnie Young ran their chain of photographic studios: 38-40 West 34th Street, Manhattan, New York. At the time that Google Maps' StreetView camera car drove past a few years ago, this address was occupied by Porta Bella Fine Menswear & Shoes [although a June 2008 report suggests the store has since been remodelled.] To conclude this article, click on the image above to open the GoogleMaps Street View for this address, then pan upwards and to the left to see the building from which Colleen Fitzpatrick's Quiz #266 photo was taken, and which started this journey of discovery for me.

References

Abramovitch, Ilana & Galvin, Seán (2001) Jews of Brooklyn. Brandeis series in American Jewish history, culture, and life. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England. 355p. ISBN 1584650036.